A small- to medium-sized enterprise typically needs two types of connections and services from a network service provider. First is voice or telephone service and second is data service, which is most commonly internet connectivity. Data service typically has a high-bandwidth requirement (in the Mb/s range) and demand typically grows rapidly as the business grows. While voice service demands typically do not grow as quickly as those of data service, voice service requires little-to-no delay in transmission of signals.
Over 90% of the buildings that house a typical small- to medium-sized enterprise are physically connected to a network provider's central office through a bundle of multiple twisted copper pairs. Thus, network service providers need to leverage the copper access by utilizing all the available copper pairs to the fullest in order to economically provide bandwidth for growing data service demands.
Today, there are two types of transmission technologies and protocols widely used to transmit a bit stream over a copper pair: T-1 and DSL (Digital Subscriber Loop). T-1 is a constant 1.544 Mbps stream developed to transport 24 digitized voice channels (DSOs). DSL encoding is a variable data rate transmission technology that optimizes a line's data rate by taking into account the distance the signal is to be transmitted and the signal-to-noise ratio at the receive end.
An expanded bandwidth can be realized if multiple copper pairs are used to transmit data. Such an arrangement can be realized through the formation of a multiple T-1 or DSL connection pipe between a transmit and receive node. Therefore, there is a need for a versatile bonding technology that can form a large bandwidth pipe using multiple transmission lines and capable of reliably transporting multiple high data rate data traffic as well as voice traffic through the pipe.